Here’s proof that Facebook, Twitter et al aren’t the only companies earning column inches on TechCrunch.
Brisbane driving school No Yelling recently found itself on the digi-bible’s front page off the back of just 15 minutes’ work, earning loads of SEO-tastic links in the process.
Thanks to a “healthy dose of lateral thinking”, No Yelling founder Matt Williams took a personal project – pretty-fying the standard Google Docs interface – and turned it into search engine gold.
Classing up Google Docs with a touch of linen
If, like most folks, you think the Google Docs background is minging, you’ll be just as pleased as TechCrunch was to learn there’s now a free, easy-to-install alternative.
Using a plugin and a big, old linen-look JPG – both hosted on the No Yelling website – it’s possible to add the new background “inspired by iOS/OS X Lion”.
“I wasn’t happy with the Google Docs interface and I made a small change that I felt improved it greatly,” Williams said.
“After using it for a while and showing it to some friends I started to consider that I could do something more with it.”
Sleeping on it
“It was actually during a power nap that the idea really took hold of me and I set out to start sending it around the interwebs.”
“Web.appstorm.net latched on to my tip and tweeted it, bringing 100 visitors, and at that point I… start[ed] reaching out to some big blogs.”
“Fifteen minutes after… we saw on our Analytics software that we had a link from TechCrunch.”
Williams and his business partner pulled an all-nighter to leverage their TechCrunch win (“with integrity of course!”).
“This has resulted in the downstream benefit of roughly 500 new links to the No Yelling website, which has of course helped our SEO greatly.”
No Yelling’s driving industry disruption
Unlike many of No Yelling’s technology-adverse counterparts, since day dot the company has made web and mobile technology, reputation and feedback systems, central to its operations.
In the same vein No Yelling has nixed “parts of the traditional driving school model [that] exist only as a result of tradition and inertia.”
So far, so clever … And now for the really annoying part
Guess how old Matt Williams is. Go on, guess.
Twenty. One. Years. Of. Age. But wait, there’s more: this is his second business, and he’s planning to launch his third in a matter of weeks. Which we imagine doesn’t leave much time to binge drink while listening to Justin Bieber.
What it does do, according to Williams, is enable him to understand better than other driving school outfits what it’s like to be a young’un learning to motor.
And it looks like he may have a point. In just 18 months No Yelling has grown to 15 Brisbane-based drivers and is now establishing a presence in other Australian cities including Canberra and Perth.
“No Yelling’s short-term goal is to disrupt the way that driving lessons are sourced on a national scale.”
